If you read French, do explore the website for le livre noir de la psychanalyse. It’s highly interesting. There is this page where Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen answers ‘internautes’ for instance. Maybe I can translate a little…

Internaute: Can one say that religion, psychoanalysis, and Coke are products that work and that sell well? MB-J: Thomas Szasz wrote a luminous, decisive book on that question. in which he compares the marketing of psychoanlysis to that of Coca-Cola. I’m entirely in agreement with his analysis.

Religion, psychoanalysis, and Coke – I like that. (Appropriate, too, since Siggy was a coker.)… Read the rest

Sometimes it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that people can’t always see what’s in front of them. However obvious it is. However frantically it jumps up and down right in front of them. However hard it punches them in the face, however red and dripping the clothes it wears, however loud it screams, however charred the flesh, however choking the smoke.

Not that they don’t notice that something is there. But what they – some people, sometimes – have a hard time making out in the fog is a possibility about what the something is. They see the something there – all red and jumping and punching as it is – and they notice it – but they don’t always … Read the rest

Small point. Very small. Small, picky, fussy point. Obsessive point. Small, minor, not that important in the great scheme of things point. So sue me, I make small points sometimes. So I’m not cosmic.

Guy named Sebastian Rotella in the LA Times, an article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Minor point.

Working into the evening in a well-guarded office in parliament, Ali retains the elegance and charisma that propelled her from refugee to political star. She wears a black pantsuit and sweater on a small, slender frame. She has oval eyes in a long, delicate face set off by pearl earrings.

Okay okay okay, it’s a minor point, I’m sorry, but god it sounds so stupid. And in sounding that … Read the rest

John Judis says Alito may be not a ‘prudent conservative’ but a ‘determined reactionary.’

Samuel Alito’s position on abortion, evidenced in his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, may turn out to be an accurate barometer of his overall judicial philosophy. First, Alito’s dissent in the 1991 case may be indicative of his position on the larger question of women’s liberty and equality, and more broadly still, of how he views the changes the feminist movement made in our understanding of liberty. In this opinion and others, Alito appears, as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas often do, to be standing athwart history, yelling stop.

And what is the chief thing people who seem to stand athwart history yelling stopstopstop … Read the rest

I’ve been meaning to say: sorry about the weekly update. I’ve been getting emails from readers who miss it, and who try to resubscribe only to get an error message. It’s broken. Sorry. I wish I could fix it – I would if I could – but I can’t. Sorry. It’s probably the hacker who broke it. I miss it too – apart from anything else, it sold a few copies of the Dictionary every time it went out, which meant that in five years or so there might be a tiny royalty. Thanks, hacker.

I think B&W is probably on its last legs. I don’t have the tech skills to fix things, so as more things break, they will … Read the rest